I saw a commercial poster flowing around China’s websites. The ad promotes a smart phone named “BlockBerry 9500″, which in appearance alone is clearly a replication of the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch-screen device released last fall by Research In Motion. This touch screen BlockBerry purportedly runs on Windows Mobile software, comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G wireless capabilities, and is available in six colors.

President Obama promotes China's shanzai mobile phone? Taking a look the poster, it is striking that the issue associated with branding piracy in China gets really ridiculous now. “Obama’s BlackBerry. My Blockberry 9500,” reads the tagline below the president’s photo. Needless to say, the photo was clearly inverted. The poster was apparently created by a sloppy layout designer. It is not hard to notice the American-flag pin is backwards on the wrong lapel. I am sure Obama’s appearance in the ad was not authorized.

So who’s behind the BlockBerry and its ridiculous marketing – and is it even for real? Like many shanzhai products, the maker, if existing, may prefer anonymity. The ad claims it comes from HAFF-COMM, but no such company comes up in searches on all major search engines.

According to a person from mobileuncle.com, the Chinese gadget chat site where BlockBerry has first been noticed and subsequently spawned a host of follow-up posts in the blogosphere, he did speak to someone from the maker of BlockBerry, who also provided him with the ad poster and information about the device. He said the cell phone maker is a factory in Shenzhen that isn’t called Haff-Comm and that BlockBerry is scheduled to be released next month. He also said the factory that makes BlockBerry was inspired by the news that President Obama likes BlackBerry.

There is always an idea behind an ad. This ridiculous idea is just the latest emanation from China’s zany shanzhai culture, a mixture of old-school copycatting and arch parody.